Man pleads guilty in murder-for-hire case, halting trial

A man pleaded guilty this week in the 2022 shooting death of 43-year-old Gary Escareno, cutting short a trial in the case, prosecutors said.

Martin Jerome Trujillo, 58, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, the 2nd Judicial District Attorney’s Office said.

Testimony began Monday in 2nd Judicial District Court in what prosecutors described as a murder-for-hire case. The trial had been scheduled to continue through Friday before Judge Clara Moran.

Prosecutors filed a motion Wednesday dropping a count of shooting at or from a vehicle after Trujillo agreed to plead to the two most serious charges in the case.

Trujillo “has elected to suspend any further testimony in the jury trial currently underway, and has agreed to plead guilty to the indictment,” Assistant District Attorney Christine Jablonsky wrote.

Albuquerque police found Escareno fatally shot in the head in the driver’s seat of a white Kia shortly before midnight on May 1, 2022, according to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court. His car had crashed into a light pole at Tahiti and Morenci NE, near Candelaria and Juan Tabo.

Witnesses told police they heard gunfire and saw a man and a woman running from the scene.

Jablonsky told jurors on Monday that Trujillo hired Freddy Granger and his girlfriend, Cassandra Dominguez, to kill Escareno in exchange for $15,000 in fentanyl, methamphetamine, a vehicle and cash. Dominguez was expected to testify in the trial.

Trujillo’s attorney, Keren Fenderson, said in opening statements that Granger and Dominguez fatally shot Escareno for their own reasons and that Trujillo had no role in the killing.

Granger, 43, pleaded guilty in March to first-degree murder in Escareno’s killing and was sentenced to life in prison, which requires him to serve at least 30 years before he is eligible for parole.

Dominguez, 40, pleaded guilty in March to second-degree murder and conspiracy in the killing and faces up to 18 years in prison, according to court records. Her sentencing hearing has not been scheduled.